Equally important as how far one needs to hit the ball — especially if you’re looking to introduce your favorite kid(s) to the game — is where to learn to hit it at all.

The darling of the two-day tournament, though, was Charlie Woods. A little late getting his debut on TV (dad Tiger debuted at age 5), the younger Woods can at least say that his initial experience was for two consecutive days and in tough competition.

To put this in perspective, the odds of making a hole-in-one have been calculated at 12,500 to 1 for amateurs and 2,500 to 1 for professionals. Moreover, it has been estimated that 1-2 percent of golfers make an ace each year. The percentage of golfers who shoot their age? 0.0000089 percent. Yes, fewer than nine players per million!

If you are playing your best round of golf this year, but flub your ball into the water at the final hole and make a snowman (for non-golfing readers, that is a score of eight), you can go out tomorrow knowing you can still shoot your best score of the year.

Congratulations to Galveston Country Club’s Knute Lund, head pro Donnie St. Germain, and their staff; and too many volunteers and sponsors to list, all of whom made this year’s Galveston Meals on Wheels tournament an overwhelming success in as safe an environment as could have been provided for a record field of 144 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compliant golfers.

Recent tree trimming has made nighttime golf even more enjoyable by adding to the illumination, but golfers should still have flashlights on board for searching for errant shots that hide in the darkness.

Friendswood’s Mustangs won the Battle by the Bay last week at Bayou Golf Course, with a team score of 340 and a winning margin of 12 shots over Clear Creek.

It’s Masters week. It is a place in time when all the golf world turns its gaze to what once upon a time was a nursery (think plants and flowers) just off the interstate in the second most populous city in Georgia, Augusta.

I know it's comparing balls with laces (108) to balls with dimples (300-500), so don’t bang any trash cans at me, please. I just find it amusing.

He said that happiness was Lubbock in the rearview mirror. As a youngster, he said, he used to go to the skating rink where he routinely got into fistfights. And where he listened to a local singer named Buddy Holly.

This week’s column takes a look at distances the ball goes whether launched by a low or high handicapper, by a youngster, or a golfer just young at heart.

Bryson DeChambeau’s prodigious drives and impressive U.S. Open Championship victory has set off a national conversation that with just a little imagination could be compared to polarization seen elsewhere in the topsy-turvy year that is 2020.

For only the second time in their history, your Houston Texans have started the NFL season with four consecutive losses. As some (not this writer) say when things are not going well, it is what it is.

The tournament is coming up fast, with a curious date of Oct. 19-22. Curious because this is the first time in tournament history that it will be contested over four days.

The 27 year-old former SMU Mustang physics major and U.S. Amateur champion has now won seven times on the PGA Tour and has at least temporarily quieted those whose assessment of his approach to the game just wouldn’t, couldn’t lead to success.

The third round is scheduled to end around 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, to clear the airways for Alabama vs. LSU. The final round will end by 1:45 p.m., leaving about a one-hour gap before the NFL late game. Let’s just call it the spirit of cooperation.

Tournament officials have made the decision to postpone the Sept. 11 Lawrence J. Del Papa Golf Tournament because of Lighthouse’s involvement with Hurricane Laura relief.

Next week’s Tour Championship will be hard pressed to match it. And so, the discussion continues on how to improve the entertainment value of the playoffs next year.